With people finally starting to ding at 50 and the basic lore of both factions and Nexus becoming common knowledge, the RP community is finally starting to ramp up. First timers to the community are ready to spread their wings and start public interaction or even apply to some of the many RP guilds that have popped up. As we’ve already gone over the Do’s of building a character, there are some lines that are important to keep in mind when both creating your new toons and interacting with others. While role-playing is a sandbox for everyone, especially in a world like Wildstar, it is still vital to know the ‘Do-Not’s’ that will help you have strong, fun, and interesting characters. So lets dive right in:
Do Not: Break established Wildstar Lore
This is probably the most important rule of all. You are not Victor Lazarin’s secret son he doesn’t talk about, nor are you one of Queen Malaya Everstar’s consorts or one of the the descendants of Myrcalus the Vindicator. Try to avoid any relation to faction leaders as possible. When was the last time you had a chat with your own country’s leader?
While these kinds of ‘Plot Twists’ are great for story lore or novel based writing, it is frowned upon within the RP community and is often a rookie mistake. I’m sure there are plenty of communities and guilds you can join that would be okay with this, but more often than not, people will not take your character very seriously. It’s like saying you are Han Solo’s grandfather in SWToR or Thrall’s nephew in WoW; it’s a little unbelievable, and who knows how many other people could be claiming the same relation.
Nor is your character a super-special-snowflake ‘Half Aurin/Half Granok’, a ‘Chua infused with the blood of the Eldan’, a ’Mordesh who was magically cured of the contagion’, a ‘Human who has actually been on Nexus for centuries’ OR ‘The Original Mechari who is also secretly the King of the Eldan’. These are not things that exist in this world that we know of.
Claiming to be something super special and important also throws people off-kilter when they attempt to RP with you. Not only are you breaking miles of established lore, but these kind of characters equates to an RP version of ‘Game-breaking’. When you are coming up with a character, try to think of a backstory that is thought-provoking, rich, but also fits into the limitations that lore has set for us. Be original!
Do Not: React the same to every situation
If you are a Chua or a Mordesh you do not always want to pick up a dead body to experiment on. If you are an Aurin you do not always want to give people hugs. Exile Humans will not always yell, “WELL TARNATIONS” (But I hope to see it often). Granok are not always getting drunk. Spice it up! Don’t be afraid to stray from what everyone will predict. This doesn’t mean that you should have a Draken that is a killing machine one moment then prancing about giving out flowers the next (unless he/she is severely imbalanced). It means that you need to, again, dig deep.
Figure out how specifically your character would react to a situation, and it should catch people off guard and make them want to interact with your character even more to find out why your Draken has hesitation attacking a Mordesh.
Also keep in mind that only answering with “Yes” or “No” can be a little…boring. Sure, the strong silent types are interesting and popular character archetypes, but everyone wants to interact with something that has more than two responses.
Do Not: Build a cookie-cutter character
It can be fun, I’ll admit, to follow every stereotype of your character’s race. Is your Draken is a vicious fighter whose only joy out of life is honor? Why? Is it because that’s what the general blurb about Draken says? Go deeper. Dig deeper. The Draken are only part of the Dominion because their leader was defeated in a battle hundreds of years ago. So how does that affect your character? Does he really just want to kill? Did his father tell him that? Did he have a father? If not, who raised him and what were they like? These are important questions you should ask yourself when building a character. Our history builds us as people and the same should apply to your characters.
Do Not: chop off someone’s arm without their permission
It is important to know the limits to ‘Yes! And…”. Do not perform an action which will affect the character in such a dramatic fashion that a player will be forced to completely change their character’s life. Effectively YOU are the controller of your characters, and in the end you decide their destiny.
I have killed a few of my beloved characters in the past, but I planned it. I decided when their time was over, and I let my community know. I had one character that I had been planning to kill off since his creation, and everyone knew that eventually, his time would come to an end. But I decided when it happened. You cannot kill off someone else’s character. Anything physical is no-go territory, unless the character’s player agrees to it or accepts it. In a PvP environment, yes, people will ‘die’ in battle in-game. In these situations for RP events that include in-game PvP against enemy faction guilds, it is usually considered a loss. If the team has decided they lost the battle, they order a retreat and everyone regroups at another location far away from the enemy. Most characters come out of these fights with scratches, bruises and a few new scars. This is common for seasoned fighters. But it is up to you to decide how much this affected your characters physically and mentally.
So that wraps us up for this week’s Fourth Wall. For those that want to explore their characters more, here is a link to a some amazing character outline templates, some short, some very long. Try answering questionnaires online for your character.
The RP community is alive and well on tumblr in the Evindra tag and the Wildstar RP Tag (WSRP). You can check out the Official Evindra Realm Forums or Wildstar Roleplay, a website dedicated to the community. People love to do small projects in all these locations like, “Ask my Character anything!” or “Introduce yourself!” and writing short stories about their character’s adventures. These are fun ways to get to know your characters better.
If you’re looking for open RP on the Exile side of Evindra, the guild The Dusksail Marauders has an open bar night every Saturday which is the perfect place to get a feel for your character and the community itself. I have not yet explored the Dominion side of Evindra, but I’m sure there will be open RP nights like this as well (if anyone knows of any, please feel free to share).
Next week we’ll talk about races of the Exiles and things to keep in mind when creating a character in the alliance of convenience. If you have any questions about roleplay, the community or lore, feel free to comment here or send me an Ask via my tumblr. I’ll be more than happy to help.
Until next time!
